Dave in Green

When you see Coca-Cola sponsorship of a minor facility it's the local Coca-Cola distributor and not the main corporation paying the sponsorship fee. Local distributors make enough profit to fund naming rights for minor league stadiums and arenas. But naming rights generate only a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining stadiums and arenas.

There aren't that many UA alumni with the personal wealth to make the level of donation required to make a significant dent in financing a new $50 million+ arena. You can be assured that UA stays in close personal touch with those few wealthy potential benefactors and that they are all well aware of the funding needed for a new arena. Realistically UA would be wasting its time chasing potential small donors to fund a project of this magnitude. How many posting here would be willing to donate as much as $1,000 toward funding a new arena above and beyond what they already contribute? A wildly optimistic guess is that there may be 1,000 UA alumni willing to donate $1,000 specifically for a new arena. That would total $1 million or about 2% of the $50 million+ required.

Buckzip, UA said that Coach Stroud would take "an indefinite medical leave of absence" because the exact length of the treatment is not predictable. But UA also said that he "is expected to return to the team in the near future."

The city that's home to the world's best current basketball player should also be home to a modern basketball arena. I wouldn't expect LeBron to personally fund a new basketball arena in Akron. I could see LeBron using his substantial influence to convince others to invest in a new basketball arena in Akron.

GoZips, no need to look all the way to Cleveland State when the David Culp who graduated from the University of Akron in 1975 has been openly campaigning for years against building a new arena in downtown Akron. His tweets of Feb. 21 and Jan. 15 represent just two of his many public pronouncements trying to kill a downtown Akron arena long before the proposed sales tax increase was announced.

I think you're right, Hilltopper. Just look at the first thing Pettine mentioned in his own list of criteria during Friday's news conference:

I think there's more to this sudden reversal than a few ragtag anti-tax protestors. There will always be at least a few protestors against any tax for any reason. Dropping the arena part will not cause the sales tax increase protests to go away. It will just take away the additional energy that was being provided by the purely anti-arena protestors who were not necessarily against proper funding for the county jail and emergency services. I think that something else beyond the protestors has happened to change the equation. Eventually more will come out on this.

I'm always open to giving fair answers to fair questions. In the case of a question from someone with a long history of questionable questions I'd need a little good-faith evidence that this question isn't superfluous. If you can explain in a little more detail exactly what point you're questioning and why, I'll do my best to give you a reasonable response.

UM = University of Miami. Reportedly chose Miami over Wisconsin and Nebraska. He redshirted his first year at Miami, played sparingly last season and will have to sit out this season before playing for the Zips. So he'll have two full seasons at UA starting in 2015-2016. Not a superstar but could be a solid MAC-level player.

Yes, you missed the point that everyone else got. But don't feel bad. There's a simple solution to your problem. The answer to this question and most of the others you ask is pretty obvious when one chooses to read with the goal of comprehension as opposed to reading with the goal to find minute details that could conceivably be misconstrued and then calling them out.

The key questions about hosting Browns training camp are whether it makes economic sense for UA and whether it doesn't interfere with Zips programs. If it doesn't pass those two tests, forget it. If it does and if UA meets all of the other conditions aside from grass field space, there are ways to remedy that. One example would be to convert the baseball diamond to 100% grass and move all Zips baseball games to Canal Park. UA needs to get specifics from the Browns on exactly how many square feet of grass fields are required and look at options from there. Looking at an aerial view of the Browns current facility in Berea, it doesn't look to me as if they require all that much in the way of grass fields.

We've been going around in circles on this subject for years with the same options discussed over and over again. Let's take a realistic look at the options. 1. There's no way to improve JAR seating at a reasonable cost without reducing capacity. It makes no sense to improve seating to attract more fans to games if you're going to turn fans away because you've reduced seating capacity below demand. The odds of UA knowingly reducing capacity below demand are close to zero. 2. To improve JAR seating without losing capacity would require major structural surgery. Tearing a building half down and building it back up with mostly new materials is almost as expensive as new construction and the finished product is still inferior to all-new construction. The odds of UA spending so much to transform the JAR are close to zero. 3. The best option to create the best fan experience is to build a new arena with or without city and county participation, which requires substantial financial investment. If the sales tax increase fails, it's unlikely that UA in the near future will have the resources to finance a new arena on its own. 4. The easiest fallback option is to soldier on with the JAR with a minor patch job and the current seating. The good part about this is that it will keep ZN.o active for years complaining about the JAR and discussing options 1, 2 and 3.

Technically the way it works is that the NCAA gives athletes a 5-year window of eligibility to complete 4 seasons of intercollegiate competition. Once the 5-year clock starts ticking, anything that causes one to sit out a season such as a redshirt, transfer, etc., burns 1 of those 5 years of eligibility, leaving just 4 years of eligibility to complete 4 seasons of intercollegiate competition.

Now wait a minute. You guys need to clear this with GP1, who has already claimed spring for American football.

I did a quick search and found on the Sirius Support Center that after June 2005 the lifetime package was changed to the lifetime of the receiver, not the lifetime of the customer. People who signed up after that can switch to a new receiver for an additional charge, but only three times. After that the lifetime service ends. The original deal you got for true lifetime service at just $399.95 was a really smart move on your part.

I'm well preserved, as my younger wife will attest.

Dr Z, that's a great example of how the internet can provide useful information on obscure subjects. I recently revived an old, non-functioning stereo turntable by finding detailed instructions on a vintage stereo forum. Do you recall how much you paid 10 years ago for you lifetime subscription? The offer I've never forgotten for more than 50 years is the one from Playboy Magazine back around 1960. They offered a lifetime subscription for just $50, and the first issue was personally delivered to your door by a Playboy Bunny! Having recently entered puberty at the time, I desperately tried but ultimately failed to figure out a way to make it happen without my parents knowing.

The Canton Memorial Civic Center is a well-preserved example of the type of arena being built circa 1951. At 63 years old, it's interesting to compare with modern arenas to see how they're being designed and built differently today.

Right, Spin. That 70% number was just a quick and dirty first stab at figuring how to calculate a new arena capacity. I'll continue to look for better numbers. But it's always just going to be an estimate. I don't think there's a hard formula that works under all conditions. I agree with you that a new arena will result in an increase in basketball attendance, assuming Zips basketball doesn't drop off the face of the earth the way Zips football did just as the new stadium was opening. Can you imagine what attendance would have been like at the Rubber Bowl during the Ianello era? I just don't know what a realistic increase would be -- 10%? 15%? 20%? I don't think there's a hard formula for calculating that, either. But I'm confident that as long as the Zips remain a top 100 team with a realistic shot to win the MAC and the NCAA tournament invitation every season, a fan-friendly new arena would certainly attract more fans to more games.

Try listening with the intent to understand. The point was purely about proper sizing of a new arena based on the average percentage of seats sold in a typical college basketball arena. The SEC and Big 12 happened to show up in a quick search, and both averaged in the low 70% range. Do you have any data to suggest that 70% of capacity is not a reasonable average estimate to plan for properly sizing a college basketball arena?

All of the various RPI rankings showed the Zips in the 90s (93, 96, etc.) at the end of the last season, so #124 to start this season represents a negative bump. Casual evaluators look at the roster and see that the Zips lost two of their top proven players (Q and Nick) with unproven freshmen (BJ, Aaron, Noah and Antino) trying to fill the roles of the departed players plus shore up the weak PG position. Someone would really need to have good inside information about the performance of these freshmen to believe that the Zips would be a top 100 team this season. Kwan, Deji and others will also have to prove themselves this season for the Zips to remain a top 100 team. It won't be easy, but Coach Dambrot has a great track record of keeping the Zips in the top 100 season after season.

I'm so Akron, the only sports forum I post on is ZipsNation.org.

GP1, I really don't care whether or not there's some form of spring football. It's easy enough for people like me to ignore it as a gimmick while people like you who can't get enough football in season try to fill more of your year with it. The only thing I object to is moving Zips football from the fall to the spring. I'm a season ticket holder and look forward to Zips football every fall. I'd be much less likely to attend Zips football games in the spring, and will continue to voice my opposition to such a move. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Fall is the season and time for football.

Is anyone on here recommending an arena with more than 8,500-seat capacity? A quick internet search reveals the percentage of seats sold at all SEC and Big 12 schools, and a deeper search would reveal more. The SEC and Big 12 both average in the low 70% capacity range of paid attendance at all home games, ranging from near 100% for the very best teams to below 50% for the perennial losers. Using 70% average capacity as a measurement, with 8,500 seats the Zips would have to average 5,950 tickets sold for each home game to reach that average percentage. That would be quite a stretch from the Zips' current home average attendance. One potential game changer would be moving to a more prestigious conference with bigger name schools, which would undoubtedly boost Zips attendance. That just points out that whatever UA does for an arena needs to be part of a bigger plan, and we really don't know what that plan is any more than we know the fine details of the proposed downtown arena plan. The fewer details we have the more speculative our opinions.

I wonder how many views the story about the tOSU band's traditional sexualized culture will get?